


by any other name

by moonanonymous



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Based on the TV show not comics, Canon Compliant, Gen, Siblings, Six times a hargreeves kid gets named and one time they don't, The Umbrella Academy (TV) Spoilers, Umbrella Academy team as teenagers, What if they weren't named until Five left?, mostly - Freeform, sibling relationships, which is an extremely confusing sentence to write but it's based on the x times trope thing, you know what Im ean
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-10
Updated: 2020-08-11
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:08:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,090
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25815559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonanonymous/pseuds/moonanonymous
Summary: Two sits cross-legged on the dusty rug and rolls the name slowly across his tongue. It fits him, or at least he hopes it does.or,It's been six months since Five disappeared. Six Hargreeves learn to grow into their new names. One doesn't.
Relationships: Ben Hargreeves & Vanya Hargreeves, Diego Hargreeves & Vanya Hargreeves
Comments: 8
Kudos: 119





	1. Chapter 1

Two sits cross-legged on the dusty rug and rolls the name slowly across his tongue. It fits him, or at least he hopes it does. It’s not bad to say, like it sometimes is with m’s or w’s that flutter fast across his lips before spilling out into a clumsy word. 

Diego, it comes easy and fast and he looks up at the painting which glows faint yellow. 

“D’you think we should give him one?” 

Three fiddles with one of the curls of her hair. She’s sitting up on the sofa next to One, feet tucked under herself, sleeves of her pajamas rolled up. 

“It would feel weird,” she says. “Would he even want one?” 

“Probably not,” Diego replies and stares up at the painted eyes, set so they’re gazing just above everyone’s head. “He would hate it, whatever it was.” 

“He was always too much of a—“ Three begins, and is cut off quickly by Four. 

“He’s not dead.” 

Four is lying half underneath the coffee table, eyes closed, curly hair pushed up against the carpet. 

“I know,” Three says carefully. 

“Well, stop saying ‘was’. I told you I would say something if he was dead.” 

“I know,” she says, then after a moment adds, “sorry.” 

There’s a moment where they all glance up again, and then there’s a clattering sound from the kitchen. Diego jumps, and looks over. Seven is frozen in the kitchen, butter knife clattering to a stop on the tile by her feet. There’s a jar of peanut butter open on the counter in front of her.

“Does she still do that every night?” 

He hears One’s voice, quiet enough that Seven won’t hear from across the room. Three nudges his thigh. Four groans and pushes his arm across his eyes.

“I’m going to bed.”

He pushes himself to his feet, wavering slightly. Diego can smell it wafting off him, sickly-sweet this time. Three un-tucks herself from the sofa and gets up, One following close behind her. Diego is left on the carpet, Six sunk into the overstuffed armchair and Seven still frozen in the kitchen. 

When he gets up close Diego sees the bag of marshmallows half-empty on the counter, and steps on the smudge of peanut butter still on the tile. Seven pushes the second piece of bread on top of the clumsy sandwich, her head down. 

“I thought Dad told you to stop,” Diego says, wiping his toe off along the edge of the carpet.

“Since when do you care?” she says. 

“I don’t,” Diego says quickly, “I just don’t want to spend another day listening to him go on about the weakness of being sad or whatever.” 

“He won’t see,” she says, picking up the sandwich and placing on a thick, yellow plate. Several of the marshmallows fall out of the sandwich and roll across the counter. “He doesn’t ever go to Five’s room anymore.”

“Yeah, and you shouldn’t either.” 

She meets his eyes for a moment just to glare at him. 

“And why not?” 

“It’s been six m-months, Sev. It’s getting kinda creepy at this point. We all think so.” 

Seven picks up the butter knife again and cuts through the sandwich. Diego hears the knife scrape against the plate and winces a little. 

“Well, sorry,” she says, and then picks up the plate and stands in front of him, “sorry that I missed the meeting that said we’re only supposed to be sad about our brother running away for six months. I guess I’m supposed to just go along with pretending like he doesn’t exist and – and getting a new name so that when he comes back he won’t even know who we are.” 

“That’s n-n-n- isn’t what the names are about, they’re Mom’s idea, not his.” 

“Sure,” Seven says, and her voice leaps up to well above a whisper, but for Seven this is yelling, “sure, that’s what I’m supposed to believe, right? That Mom was the one who came up with this and it isn’t just some other weird test? Trying to see if we can change into whatever – into something that Five’s not gonna be.” 

She tries to sidestep Diego, but he blocks her, puffing his chest out even though she’s still an inch taller. 

“Don’t talk about Mom like that,” he says, “And don’t pretend like – like you’re the only one that liked him, okay? He was my brother, too.” 

“Stop saying ‘was’,” she spits, back down to a whisper, “and stop acting like you’re the only one that cares about Mom –“ 

“Like I’m -- ?” Diego begins, loudly, but then a hand tugs on his elbow and he looks over his shoulder to see Six looking at him with a mostly resigned expression. Seven takes advantage of this momentary lapse to dodge around the two of them and disappears up the stairs holding the plate. 

“Can’t you give it a rest?” Six asks. 

Diego shrugs his arm away. 

“She keeps – the names aren’t like that, right?” 

“Like what?” 

“You know,” Diego says, but then doesn’t elaborate. Six answers anyways. 

“I don’t think so,” he says. “I think Mom is just trying to make us happy.” 

Diego nods. Six yawns. 

“I’m gonna go to bed,” he says. “Night, Diego.” 

Despite his annoyance at Seven, Diego feels a small flutter in his chest when he hears his name. It’s strange, like he’s a character on TV. He quickly folds his smile back down into a neutral expression. He turns, but Six has already slunk out of the room, quiet as ever. 

“Goodnight,” he says, to the empty room, and then adds, “Ben.”


	2. Chapter 2

Ben takes the stairs two at a time, book tucked under his arm. He had finished it at dinner, jumped back to re-read the final chapter again in front of the fireplace, and then held it quite still while listening to the chattered conversation between the rest of his siblings. He reaches the top of the staircase quickly, turns, and pads down the hallway to Seven’s room. The thin beam of light shines under the door, but as he approaches it extinguishes itself. Ben stops just outside the door, leaning towards the dusty wood. 

“It’s just me,” he says, and the light springs back on. He pushes the door open to see Seven sitting up from where she clearly just hastily sprung under the covers. 

“Hey, S-Ben,” she says. “Did you finish that one?” 

Seven smiles and jerks her head to indicate the book. Ben nods. 

“I have the sequel,” she says, “it’s not as good as the first but I thought it was okay.” 

“Yeah, thanks,” Ben says, and then he sinks cross-legged to the floor as Seven gets off the bed with a creak of the mattress.

He watches as she crouches down, pushes the rug aside and wiggles up the loose floorboard. Glancing up to see that the door is closed, she pulls up two books and tosses them to Ben. One is the sequel to the book he just read. The other is Twelfth Night. Ben reaches down into the hole underneath the floorboard until his fist closes around the knife, one of the ones that Five stole off Two the night before their eleventh birthday. He sits back, opens Twelfth Night, and begins to slowly pry the cover off with slow, careful pushes of the knife blade. 

Seven grabs the finished book from the floor next to him and turns it over in her hands. It’s currently wearing the cover of Othello, pried off its original pages and carefully glued on. 

“You did a nice job with this one,” Seven says, picking up a pair of scissors from the hole and beginning to work the cover off, “but I just got a copy of The Hunger Games and I’m running low on acceptable book titles.” 

“That’s not the vampire one, is it?” 

Seven smirks, shaking her head. 

“No, it’s about a bunch of kids who have to fight each other in the future. I heard it’s good.” 

“Too close to home, I think,” Ben says, and sees Seven frown a little. He bends his head back down over his book. 

There’s a moment of silence, punctuated only by the rustling of paper, and then Seven says,

“Two hates me.” 

Ben glances back at her. She’s pushing the scissors hard into the edge of the paper. 

“He hates everyone,” he says. Seven shrugs. 

“He doesn’t hate you.” 

“Yeah, well,” Ben says, “that’s cause he knows I could kill him like that.” He taps the edge of his knife against the spine of the book.

“That’s not funny,” Seven says. 

There’s an uncomfortable grumble in Ben’s stomach, the sensation of shifting. He takes a deep breath in through his nose, and it quiets. 

“I know,” he says. 

“Did he mean it?” She asks, after a moment, “that you all think it’s creepy? The sandwiches?” 

“Well,” Ben says, shifting uncomfortably. His stomach moves again, and he’s never been good at lying, “we talked about it, a little, just after the last mission, in the car. But we don’t all think it’s creepy, that was mostly just One and Th—“ 

“One and Three, yeah, of course,” Seven says. Under her scissors the title page tears in two. 

“We don’t – they don’t really think it’s creepy, they just think he’s, you know, dead,” Ben says. Seven looks up at this, her eyes round. 

“But Four says he’s not. He says it all the time.” 

“Yeah, well, since when has Four ever been the most, you know, reliable of us? About powers?” 

Ben looks back down to his book, the cover is about halfway pried off now. He places the knife on the floor and begins to push his fingernails slowly into the gap between the cover and the spine.

“But he does it all the time, on the missions, right? He conjures people that have been in the bank or museum or whatever so you can have the layout and know where to go and where things are hidden and see around corners and stuff.”

“How would you know what happens on missions?” Ben spits out before he can stop himself. 

“That’s what One writes up in the mission reports,” Seven says, in a quieter voice. 

“You read the mission reports?” 

“Dad makes me type them up,” she says. “He says One’s handwriting is a disgrace.”

“Oh,” Ben says. The cover of the book comes off with a final crackle. Ben tosses the naked Shakespeare back into the hole, where it lands on top of the actual Othello, also coverless. “Well, we usually just tell Dad stuff like that when we get back. Otherwise he’d start locking Four back up in the graveyard, or whatever.” 

“So you lie to him?” 

“It’s not really a lie,” Ben says, “he has done it once or twice, I think. But it’s hard to tell if he’s faking. And usually he just acts as the lookout.”

“But he thinks Five is okay.” 

“I mean, yeah. But I don’t know if I trust that Five is alive just cause Four can’t conjure him.”

Seven looks up and to the right, towards the wall that separates her room from Five’s. Ben follows her gaze. 

“I keep expecting him to pop through,” Seven says, her voice even quieter.

“Yeah,” Ben says. 

“Can you finish your book in the morning?” 

She’s still not looking at them. Ben feels a strange, bubbling guilt in his stomach. 

“Look, Sev, I’m sorry –“ 

“That’s not my name now,” she says. 

“Sorry, Vanya. I’m sorry about –“ 

“Don’t be,” she says shortly. “You just told me what they won’t. What they knew the whole time, I guess.” 

“They’re not trying to keep anything from you, Se – Vanya. It’s just they –“ 

“Don’t think to. Yeah, I know.” 

She places the scissors and the book back down into the hole. Ben follows suit. As he bends over, he sees the small stack of books that Five liberated from the library a few weeks before he left, most with their covers still intact. Vanya pushes the floorboard back into place and pulls the rug overtop. She stands, crossing the room to sit on her bed, pulling her legs up to her chin. 

“I didn’t ..” Ben says, and trails off. He’s not sure what he did or didn’t mean to do. 

“I think I hear Mom,” Vanya says. “You should get to your room.” 

Ben doesn’t hear anything, but he nods anyway and backs out of the room, pulling the door shut behind him.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading so far! 
> 
> Find me @moonanonymous on tumblr :)


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